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It was clear that quite different paths needed to be followed. Sometime later, he developed a key work that resulted in the submission of his thesis L'économie de l'empire portugais in Paris in 1959. He was joined in the 1930s by Charles Boxer, an expert on the history of Japan, who beginning with Macao, went on to study the Portuguese empire, finally arriving at Brazil, culminating in the publication of The Portuguese Seaborne Empire in 1969.
In the meantime, the defence of old-fashioned, regressive visions that were of interest to the Estado Novo [New State] was left to Idalino da Costa Brochado, Dias Dinis, Domingos Maurício, A. da Silva Rego, and António Brásio, some of them with notable erudite capacity but all armed with undeniable pious intentions. They could not compare with what was being accomplished and prepared in the other historiographical field: Avelino Teixeira da Mota emerged in the wake of other naval officers who were also historians, reaching top positions in the Portuguese historiography of the expansion. The 1940s and 1950s also saw the beginning of the work of António Carreira on black and mestizo Africa and that of the young Joel Serrão, who advanced indispensable elements for the history of the island of Madeira and the Atlantic constraints. In the 1950s, Joaquim Barradas de Carvalho and Luís de Matos asserted themselves in academic France: both were responsible for pivotal research, especially from the innovative perspectives of the Portuguese and Latin texts of the 15th and 16th centuries. Virgínia Rau and Jorge Borges de Macedo were preparing to occupy top positions at the Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa and from time to time published articles on the history of Expansion: on the island of Madeira, on the Orient, and on Brazil. They were mainly interested in demographic and commercial issues.
In 1954, the Comissão Nacional das Comemorações do V Centenário da Morte do Infante D. Henrique [National Committee for the Commemorations of the 5th Centenary of the Death of Prince Henry the Navigator] was created. Along with other initiatives and several grandiose and spectacular events, two indispensable works were published: the Portugaliæ Monumenta Cartographica by Armando Cortesão and A. Teixeira da Mota and the Monumenta Henricina by Dias Dinis.
